Quickies

Quickies: TSA’s binary body scanners

And the useless products that capitalism and patriarchy tell women to buy to make their lives better

TSA’s body scanners are gender binary, humans are not – CN: Transphobia. Olivia, when pulled aside for additional screening by the TSA, was told that she would have to submit to a physical search by a male TSA official or she would not be allowed to fly. Body scanners have two settings – male and female – and the person running the scanner determines which setting to use based on each traveler’s physical appearance. This means that any bodily variance can register as an anomaly and require extra screening. ProPublica also spoke to several women who had gone through extra screening after being scanned with the male setting, which then meant their breasts were determined to be an anomaly by the scanner.

What Goop really sells women – “During just a few weeks of wellness experimentation, I found myself sucked into the paranoid skepticism that drives people to buy more products, read more pseudoscience, and orient their lives around ailments that might not even exist.”

Athleisure, barre, and kale: The tyranny of the ideal woman – Pairs well with the above article! “Women are genuinely trapped at the intersection of capitalism and patriarchy – two systems that, at their extremes, ensure that individual success comes at the expense of collective morality. And yet there is enormous pleasure in individual success. It can feel like license and agency to approach an ideal, to find yourself – in a good picture, on your wedding day, in a flash of identical movement – exemplifying a prototype. There are rewards for succeeding under capitalism and patriarchy; there are rewards even for being willing to work on its terms. There are nothing but rewards, at the surface level. The trap looks beautiful. It’s well-lit. It welcomes you in.”

Amanda

Amanda works in healthcare, is a loudmouthed feminist, and proud supporter of the Oxford comma.

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